Cravingly Yours
by DrPebbles
Summary: Buffy craves vitamins. Tara craves sleep. Dawn craves attention. Willow craves magic markers. Unfortunately, no one gets quite what they want if the Mouth - of Hell - has anything to say about it.
1. Sunny D

**Cravingly Yours**

Disclaimer: Joss Whedon, et al., own the wondrous Buffyverse. All I own is my brain. Trade?

Summary: Buffy craves vitamins. Tara craves sleep. Dawn craves attention. Willow craves m-magic markers. Unfortunately, no one ever gets what they want if the Mouth (of Hell) has anything to say about it.

*

She had a sudden craving for orange juice.

It wasn't the most helpful thought, Buffy acknowledged, as she ducked under the swing of another flailing purple arm. Still, the thought gave her a small boost of adrenaline, and with a quick promise of fruity beverage goodness to herself, Buffy applied a concentrated burst of violence to finish off her latest slayee.

She had dubbed it the Purple People Eater when she caught the thing trying to shove a confused vampire into its gaping purple maw. The nostalgia that sight brought on must've led her to a thirst for long-forgotten childhood beverages, and thus to the thought of a tall glass of Sunny D.

After all, Buffy reasoned, her days had become severely lacking in vital vitamins. Mornings were reserved strictly for black coffee and bright orange cow-hat uniforms, and falling asleep at the grill was the pressing concern that, rather counter-productively, kept Buffy awake at night.

The thought of orange juice was reluctantly set aside when a chorus of tingles alerted her to several approaching vampires, before lewd catcalling and emphatic growls belabored the point. Buffy sighed, and told herself that she'd buy herself an entire case of Sunny D someday, lack of money be damned, if she could finish off this party of five without getting vamp dust in her hair. Her reasoning entailed a complex system of budget-balancing involving showering, water bills, time loss, job endangerment, juice, and, oddly, vacuum cleaners.

Twenty minutes later, Buffy was leaning over a gravestone trying her best not to puke her innards out, food of any sort driven indefinitely from her mind. Drunk vampires, Buffy noted, were both overzealous and unfriendly. They were also too incoherent to follow the rules. That is, they had clawed around like really lame fledglings, and used smashed bottles and knuckle rings instead of fangs. Buffy almost felt affronted on behalf of other vampires, but she was too busy clutching her cut up stomach to really care all that much.

It'd become slightly unfair when it came out that the drunk vamps had been wrestling buddies prior to vamping. Buffy didn't want to know what kind of vamp would want to try turning a wrestler, but she was never one to dispute the illogical thought patterns of monsters.

When the taste of bile edged away from her throat, Buffy let herself slump down on the cool grass, enjoying the ambiance of the dusty cemetery grounds. She absently patted the tombstone beside her, skimming the engraved text. Roger, Buffy mused, must have been a beloved…oh, a wrestler. Huh, imagine that. Buffy hastily abandoned her spot, moving a polite distance away and nursing a twinge of guilty conscience. Rest in peace, Buffy thought weakly. Ashes to ashes and all that.

Trudging home, Buffy tried to remember whether or not Sunnydale High ever had a wrestling team. If they did, it wasn't a cheerleading sport, Buffy decided. She would've remembered a spectacle like W-R-E-S-T-L-E being spelled out in pom-poms. Rarely did words that complex, sounding-out-wise, escape a spotlight in cheerleading history, or at least bragging rights for a week. Just among the competition, of course.

It was as she contemplated the worth of bragging rights in high school athletics that Buffy realized she was feeling distinctly woozy and, just to have a word party, a little loopy and offbeat as well.

"Gosh," Buffy murmured. "My door is so blurry."

She promptly stumbled and tripped on the doorsteps that appeared out of nowhere, and in a moment of brilliant clarity, Buffy grabbed at her doorknob and twisted. It opened with a resounding crack, punctuated by a waking yelp from somewhere upstairs.

The door let in its bedraggled occupant and was closed securely, accompanied by a tiny choir of wooden pops.

Buffy shrugged reflexively and shed her jacket, moving to sit on a kitchen footstool placed conveniently by the doorway for this purpose. There was a passing thought that the first aid kit underneath it was rather cleverly placed, before Buffy let her head lean against the wall and quietly passed out.


	2. Alarming Clocks

**Cravingly Yours**

Disclaimer: Joss Whedon, et al., own the wondrous Buffyverse. All I own is my brain. Trade?

Summary: Buffy craves vitamins. Tara craves sleep. Dawn craves attention. And so on.

*

Tara jerked awake with a yelp. It took several moments before she remembered what had woken her, and these moments were followed by a series of equally alarming splintering sounds.

Tara quietly lifted the covers and slid out of bed, sparing a glance at the digital clock display beside her. It blinked 2:54 a.m., casting a flickering green glow over the now empty bed.

It's probably Buffy getting in from patrol, Tara reassured herself, but I should check anyway.

The thought wasn't enough to ward away a loud, unstealthy yawn, but Tara didn't let that phase her.

There was also a quickly squashed niggle of doubt that said Buffy would've prevented a splintering door at the cost of her very life, rather than risking the necessity of overtime at the Palace to pay for repairs. Xander would offer to do it for free, naturally, but there was the tug-and-pull routine preceding it that always seemed caustic, somehow, to Buffy's pride.

Tara reached the top of the staircase and noted with relief that the Summers door was closed firmly, if a bit jaggedly, and Buffy was sitting in her customary post-Slayage cuddle corner, not that Tara would ever tell Buffy she called it that.

In the dark, Tara could see that Buffy had drifted off, and let herself direct an amused smile at the slumbering Slayer. When the first aid kit and stool had first been set up, Buffy had pointed to it as a convenient emergency measure. It hadn't taken long for everyone – or just Tara and Dawn – to notice its daily use. Tara couldn't fathom why Buffy would hide her rather obvious need for nightly first aid supplies, but as a professional avoider of unnecessary confrontation, let it go.

Tara crept down the stairs, flicking on the dim hallway light at the bottom.

"Oh, Buffy."

It took a moment for her to register Buffy's unkempt state, and Tara moved on to quickly eyeing the various visible wounds. Bleeding abdominal cuts, a head wound, some deep bruising. Tara reached for the first aid kit, now hoping that Buffy was soundly asleep rather than severely concussed.

As she did her best to gently clean and bandage up the more severe cuts, Tara wondered, not for the first time, if Willow had regularly helped patch up the Slayer, and felt the creeping sense of guilt that perhaps Buffy had resorted to leaving wounds untended rather than request the regular help of her best friend's not quite as close ex-girlfriend.

In truth, Buffy and Tara rarely saw each other. The schedules of a college student and a working Slayer crossed only on occasional Dawn duty and meals. When Willow moved back on-campus, further away from the magical environs and into conveniently subsidized scholarship housing, Buffy had pitched the idea of renting out the master bedroom. If the additional income meant keeping the house, Buffy was willing to make use of her mother's room, though the gleam in her eye had hinted at a stringent interview process most applicants wouldn't survive.

Tara was quick to jump on this, offering to be the first applicant, while managing to halt even the slightest signs of protestation from the Slayer. Buffy was treated to an impressively non-confrontational query regarding hiding secret identities while living with a stranger, and allowing a complete stranger to live with Dawn.

Buffy seemed a bit relieved by the point Tara handed over her rent check, which she insisted was written and done and couldn't be taken back. After all, she was putting her housing stipend to the use it was intended, while getting the home-like living accommodations she was so fond of. The college dorm never managed to be truly comforting to Tara. She liked not having to walk down open hallways wrapped in a towel to reach the shower, and she liked having a kitchen safe to store her own groceries and a living room peaceful enough to study in.

It helped, also, to know that the additional income helped pay for bills and more decent groceries for the Summers sisters, and that she'd be close by if a Scooby emergency came up. It always chilled her to think that a magical problem might happen or that Willow might be hurt, and they'd be unable to get in touch with her.

Therefore, Buffy and Tara developed a comfortable routine. Whoever had earlier class or work left extra coffee percolating on the counter. Dinner was planned by whoever arrived back earlier, and the other would be the one to call Dawn down and wash up later. Dawn complied more readily than before, now better adjusted and generally cheery in a routine that meant she could have Tara taking her out for ice cream anytime and Buffy free to offer occasional movie nights, or a joint pancake breakfast.

Tara put away the antiseptic and piled up the bloodied gauze and bandages. Standing up a bit warily, Tara called Buffy's name and gave her a gentle shake. After three more tries, Buffy swam back into consciousness and thankfully gave no instinctive reaction to waking up in pain and sitting in a cramped corner. Bleary-eyed, Buffy looked up.

"Tara?" Buffy cleared her throat, and her second question lost the rasp. "What time is it?"

"Uh, sometime after 3?" Tara answered, slightly surprised at the sudden question. "Are you feeling alright? You came in sort of battered. Do you remember, um, getting knocked out at all?"

Standing up, Buffy frowned, not seeming to give it much thought. "No, no I'm fine."

Then she looked down at herself. "Oh," Buffy said, turning to Tara with a ghost of a smile. "Thanks. You made with the first-aid-age. Nice bandaging, too."

Buffy casually edged back toward the wall, and leaned. She grimaced at a sudden thought. "Did I wake you when I came in? Things are a bit blurry at the moment."

"Oh." Tara was startled into response again. "No – you actually, uh, you might've broken the door, a little?"

Tara frowned when her voice came out more nervously guilty than reassuring, as if delivering the bad news tied her to the deed.

Buffy looked over, and immediately honed in on the cracked door knob and splintered edge. "Damn," she muttered. Her brief moment of upset was stolen by an unexpectedly long yawn, and Buffy distractedly decided to put the door behind her for now.

"Well, I'm heading to bed then," Buffy announced, with a pointed look away from the splintered wood. She let a smile aim its way back toward Tara. "Thanks for patching me up, and everything."

"It was nothing," Tara insisted quickly. "If you want, I--I could help you with that, more regularly."

Buffy seemed taken aback. "Thanks. But, no, I can't let you do that. You have all that – college stuff. I don't want to be the one that turns all the professors against you because you start snoozing in class. Believe me, that was always the worst part of class."

When Tara seemed doubtful, Buffy quietly amended her statement. "I'll let you know if I ever need help for something. It's, well, that's the system Will and I had. I'd wake her up if it was an injury I couldn't reach, and she'd wake me up if I started snoring in class." Buffy grinned. "It was a good system."

Tara smiled at that, and nodded seriously. "Just never hesitate to wake me."

"Can do." Buffy turned back around and headed slowly up the stairs. "Good night, Tara."

"Night, Buffy." Tara cleared up the supplies and returned to bed, dreams of uninterrupted dreams invading her sleep.


	3. Metahorsesis

**Cravingly Yours**

Disclaimer: Joss Whedon, et al., own the wondrous Buffyverse. Also my soul, but that's worth less.

Summary: Buffy craves vitamins. Tara craves sleep. Dawn craves attention. And so on.

*

Dawn wanted attention. It was her only thought when she absently stroked the innocently glowing magical amulet on the shelf she'd been smearing dust around on for the past hour. It was her last thought before the small world of Sunnydale, for the 3.5th time, underwent an unnoticed flip-flop of a corner of the fabric of the universe.

And Dawn sprouted hooves.

And then some One out in the ether raised a metaphysical hand to a metaphorical mouth and gravely uttered, "Ooops."

This was followed by a ponderous, "Oh, Me."

A few other Beings gathered around to watch the fall out, drawing up a philological card game to occupy the intervening light-time-transference.


	4. Beautiful Day

**Cravingly Yours**

Disclaimer: Joss Whedon, et al., own the wondrous Buffyverse. Also my soul, but that's worth less.

Summary: Buffy craves vitamins. Tara craves sleep. Dawn craves attention, but doesn't horse around about it.

A/N: There's a chapter before this that one should read – blink (click) and you'll miss it! A rather important plot development occurs, along with a significant appendage.

*

It was a beautiful day.

The sky had been woken up in a mash of pinks and grays that evoked thoughts of mellow watercolor portraits rather than moldy grapefruit, and Tara had no bad words for it.

"Gah, light," Buffy moaned, turning away from the window. "I wish the sun would go away forever."

There was the distinct sound of bated breathing, as Tara stared at Buffy with wide "it's possible you've just killed us all" eyes, and Buffy whipped her head back around to the window, now with an almost desperate appreciation.

"Oh, sun, stay, I completely didn't mean it," Buffy corrected hastily, hoping no vengeance demons had taken it upon themselves to specialize in weather. Buffy had stopped ruling out the oddest of hobbies once kitten poker had been brought to the table.

When the sky continued to radiate its odd choice of colors, Tara and Buffy let out identical sighs of relief.

"Maybe next time wish things a little, ah, less verbally?" Tara suggested, managing a rather strained smile.

Buffy nodded. "Mmhm. Lips zipped. Not worth the consequences."

The sound of muffled sobbing suddenly came rather obviously from Dawn's room.

"Speaking of consequences," Buffy continued, "Do we have anything on the Dawn-monster yet?"

Tara frowned. "Maybe calling her, um, Dawn-monster, isn't really helping?"

Buffy grimaced. "Yep, that's going to be a harder bone to shake. Xander was all with the 'Dawn-meister', and then it was with the hooves, and then the 'monster' just kind of naturally followed…"

Under Tara's increasingly not-quite-approving frown, Buffy caved. "Yes, alright, let's go check on the Dawnie…thing."

Tara sighed, and followed Buffy up the stairs, wondering if her lately dream-deprived mind was to blame for this new set of unexplainable events.

*

It turned out, to the universal dismay of the Scoobies, that the unexplainable set of events had nothing to do with hallucinations, and everything to do with very real hooves.

Dawn stood in the middle of the Magic Box, with light streaming through the windows kindly illuminating her unnaturally humped form.

"Why do I have to wear this?" Dawn whined softly. "I'm not a horse. I just have hooves."

"That would be why we didn't give you reins or ride you like a pony," Anya stated perkily. "Instead, we just covered your unseemly form with large, unseemly clothing. It makes very good sense. You should count yourself lucky."

Dawn bit back a patented shriek of frustration, opting instead for slight hysterics. "Lucky?! Anya, I have _hooves_!"

"Yes, we can see that," Anya said patiently. "Except we can't, because we covered them up with your lumpy brown clothes so that no one would notice. Anyway, there are many people much uglier with much more horrible fates, like this one woman who had an overgrown birth defect right in her--"

"Anya! Love of my life, I…feel like hugging you." Xander enveloped Anya in a bear hug, quickly stifling her attempts at imparting wisdom to an impressionable young teenager whose legal guardian could pummel them into weensy smudges.

Said guardian tactfully entered at that moment. "Hey guys," Buffy said, swinging up to perch beside the cash register. "What's up?"

Anya hovered for a moment, eyeing the casually seated, financially unstable Slayer next to her money. Anya quietly disentangled herself from Xander and moved to her usual spot behind the cash register, giving a nonchalant greeting as she made her move. "Hi Buffy. You look well today."

Xander quickly raised a finger. "And I swiftly second that motion."

"Guys!" Dawn stamped a hoof, then quickly tried to retract her motion. "Stop complimenting Buffy! She doesn't need compliments. She doesn't have hooves!"

"Lots of people don't have hooves," Anya stated helpfully.

"Don't you think I know that?! Gah! Why can't you people be better at reacting to recently malformed children?" Dawn said, flailing her arms helplessly and trying to curb the impulse to stamp at the floor again.

Tara chose that moment to look up from her research. "Dawnie, don't worry. We'll get you fixed…as soon as someone figures out how."

Willow's absence from the magic research seemed to weigh heavily on her for a moment, and Dawn broke the moment with a grateful smile to Tara. "I know, I'm sorry, Tara. It's just that the whiny brat tends to come out when I mysteriously grow appendages…and I think my hooves are itching."

"Oh, eww, Dawnie," Buffy commented, then added, "Is there anything I can do?"

Dawn rolled her eyes. "Well, you could sit there and do nothing. It's better than laughing, like what you did for the first ten minutes."

Buffy looked at once affronted and guilty. "I'm sorry, for the tenth time, Dawnie, you know I didn't mean it. I was just…I had a long night, and I thought I was having a dream…and it was so funny."

When Dawn seemed insulted, Buffy quickly clarified, "Not you! You weren't funny. _Dream_-you was funny. There's a big difference, really."

Dawn's mulish expression said she didn't believe a word coming out of Buffy's mouth.

"Will it help if I kill something for you?" Buffy asked, hoping to sooth her sister. "I can slay something horsey?"

Dawn gave a horrified gasp. "No! God, Buffy, why do you always have to be so…lame?"

Buffy stared helplessly as Dawn clomped into the training room, shutting the door firmly behind her. More clomping could be heard as Dawn moved around.

Xander looked at Anya, silently hoping she'd say something completely inappropriate to take Buffy's mind off of her strange loss of ability to communicate with remote sense when around her younger sister.

Anya caught Xander's intense gaze, and immediately asked, "Are you constipated, honey? We have pills for that."

Buffy and Tara caught each others' gaze and then quickly looked away, biting their lips as Xander's wide-eyed gaze swung toward them.

Xander hastily took back his mental wish, and concurred that he needed to first work on communication with his own significant other, before trying to unravel the mystery that was what Buffy and Dawn called sisterly interaction.

Meanwhile, Tara searched in vain for mentions of hoof-sprouting incidents in the Magic Box reference section.

Dawn sat quietly in the training room, having realized that moving around would result in large amounts of clomping that would ruin her silent treatment of her sister.

Unaware of Dawn's silent plan, Buffy tapped a foot impatiently against the glass of the counter, trying to remember if she'd promised to sub in for anyone at the Doublemeat that night. Her roving eyes eventually settled on a sparkly magical amulet tucked against a partially-dusted shelf. It glowed a faint, familiar green.

Buffy jumped off the counter and made her way forward, a growing pit of dread forming as the amulet's lumpy form took shape before her eyes. It was a glowing key, and the shiny circular end had been molded into a magnificent, devilish horse head…that was spitting fire.

Turning toward the others to redirect their attention, Buffy reached to pick up the key.


	5. Avada Kaboom

**Cravingly Yours**

Disclaimer: Joss Whedon, et al., continues to be wonderful, but continues to refuse relinquishing his (their) ownership of the Buffyverse to hordes of fanfic writers. No hard feelings, though.

Summary: There seem to be cravings, and some of them move in mysterious ways.

A/N: This may be a strange and unfamiliar sight, so I will attempt to describe it – it's a brand new chapter of Cravingly Yours. Please enjoy, and know that I had entirely forgotten the existence of my account here (if you're familiar with Twisting the Hellmouth, it has sucked my life away) and how much I enjoyed these stories (hey, they're fun to write!), so expect more updates soon.

*

Tara sighed and closed the slowly decaying tome. It had only yielded recipes of ground horse hooves, and Tara was certain Dawn would not really find the funny in being used as a spell ingredient. Getting up and putting the book away, Tara frowned and looked around in mild confusion. She hadn't heard Buffy say a single word in the past half minute, which was rare for the easily bored Slayer. When Xander stopped shooting vaguely annoyed looks at his fiancée, and Anya stopped reorganizing the money, all three Scoobies found themselves looking around, realizing that something key had likely happened, and they had been left with no trace or clue.

"Did, uh, anyone…see where Buffy went?" Tara asked tentatively.

Clueless faces stared back at her, and there were gulps all around. Randomly appearing hooves coinciding with randomly disappearing Slayers stopped sounding like a funny cartoon situation, and started to resemble a TNT apocalyptic drama sort of thing, with high ratings and character death warnings.

Xander searched his brain for answers, knowing that of the three, he'd clocked the most history-of-Buffy Slayer incidents field time. This held little resemblance to big witchy teleportation, big vengeancy teleportation, creature-of-the-night hypnosis, Polgara demon amnesia stabbings, praying mantis ladies, living dead puppets, or the cheese man, though, and Xander stated his only remaining conclusion. "Buffy's gone, we have to do something."

Anya huffed. "Look at you with the stating the obvious, and then next time I state something obvious, you'll start giving me those hairy eyeballs again."

Tara wrapped her arms around herself, trying to think. Thinking before acting was her mantra, because if she could spend enough time thinking, she wouldn't have to act on it. In this case, though, no one seemed ready to give them marching orders. Tara wondered if this is how Willow felt when she became Buffy's big gun o' magic, rather than the much safer backup researcher.

Tara wondered if her next question counted as stalling, but it was busy struggling to become a question first. "I think…we should tell Dawnie?"

Xander looked uncertain. Anya looked curiously at a shelf opposite the cash counter. "I think someone tampered with my shop shelf."

A frustrated sigh was followed up by a last plea from Xander. "Will you please _focus_, honey? Buffy's disappeared, Dawn has hooves, and we have yet another situation for which no precedence has existed ever, and now it's only us three of the much diminished Scooby gang who have to find out if she's been magically abducted, or touched something that magically abducted her, or if we got mind-wiped and forgot about Buffy and she disappeared. But that doesn't really explain the hooves, so my experience with sudden invisibility is pretty much shot."

Anya impulsively hugged Xander. "Don't worry sweetie, no one really expects you to do anything."

When she didn't quite receive a warm hug in return, Anya gave up. "That was supposed to be comforting and sweet. Since you don't appreciate my obligatory gesture, I'm going to go investigate my shop theft now."

"Okay." Xander wondered when Anya's words had become so difficult to read. Then, he mentally slapped away his personal problems with the reminder that their best Slayer friend – well, only Slayer friend - had just gone AWOL, possibly unwillingly, and could be in any sort of hellish situation. Xander decided that assuming worst case scenario could not go wrong as long as resurrection spells weren't involved.

Tara, meanwhile, had received no answer to her question, and realized she'd have to put action to her own words.

"Dawn?" Tara called out, walking over to the training room door and knocking firmly. "Something's happened, and it might be best that you come out here."

When Dawn didn't reply, Tara went from feeling concerned to very, very worried. If both Summers sisters had disappeared, there was even less of a chance that the hooves and disappearing act were an innocent coincidence. In fact, it was hard evidence that something sinister was at work here. Unfortunately, there were so many possibilities for who would want to target the Slayer and her latent Key sister that researching a solution could take ages, if not simply be impossible. After all, ancient tomes were rarely up to date.

Tara pushed open the training room door, just as Anya called out excitedly from the main shop floor.

"I've got it! The transmogrification intention amulet is gone. Buffy must've touched it while she was wishing to disappear or something. So that's good, right? We know what we're dealing with."

Xander's enthused reply mixed with Anya's own excitement, but Tara walked back to the duo with a sense of nagging dread.

"Anya, is the amulet only supposed to affect the person who touches it?"

Anya held up a small card bearing a sketch of a plain stone and an inky caption. "This? Directly, yes. It's one of our most powerful items, and I have no idea why it was on the middle shelf like that. Also, someone did a really bad dusting job here. Must've been Dawn. Did you tell her that her sister disappeared yet?"

Tara shook her head slowly. "That's kind of the problem. Dawn's not in the training room. She must've disappeared when Buffy did."


End file.
